"Of course," Vargen replied. "For as long as feasible. Taking due precautions. Positioning ourselves here, we took a bigger gamble than we knew. I don't want to push our luck further. "

  "Nor 1, sir." Yoran laughed like a boy. "Not with everything we've got to carry home!"

  They've forgotten their feud, Laurice thought. I have too. At least, it doesn't matter anymore. Probably it will again, when we are again among human- things. But today it's of no importance whatsoever.

  Carry home ... Yes, this precious freight of knowl-

  edge. There must be more data aboard now than we could transmit back in days, maybe in tens of days. We have more in our care than just our lives. "Those fiery clouds that got ejected," she asked, "why weren't they recaptured?"

  "The energies released caused them to exceed escape velocity from the vicinity of the ergosphere," Yoran said. "I'm half afraid to calculate how much energy that was. The ergospheres themselves, like the event horizons, went through contortions as they met and fused. Space-time did. I don't know what happened in those microseconds. Maybe we never will." Awe shook his words. "For an instant, the gates stood open between entire universes

  "The hints alone should reveal a new cosmos to your minds," Copperhue murmured.

  Laurice nodded, dazed more than comprehending. "But what, now, holds the clouds together? Why don't they whiff away, evaporate?"

  Yoran laughed afresh. "Do you take me for an oracle, milady? At this stage, we can only guess. Magnetic bottle effects, conceivably, as in ball lightning. Qr maybe each is the-4he atmosphere around a new-formed mass. Yes, I think that's a bit more likely. But we'll find out."

  "Those masses would need to be planet-sized," Vargen said low. "That gas is incandescent hot. It'd never stay around anything less. As if ... this union tried to beget worlds--

  "Signal received," Darya broke in. "Audio on the fifth standard laser band. Code: 'Distress. Please respond immediately.' I I A dream hand caught Laurice around the throat.

  "You know where it's from?" she heard Vargen snap.

  "Yes. The Naxian ships just south of us. One of them." If Darya has to correct herself, is she frightened?

  "Acknowledge afid translate, for God's sake!"

  Laurice had an impression that the hisses and whistles beneath the impersonal robotic voice were equally calm. "Crystal That Sparkles, commanding Altitude, beaming to Erthuma vessel Darya. We request information as to your condition after the event."

  "We're in good shape," Vargen said. "You?"

  "Not so," came after seconds of time lag. "We and Green Pyramid were tossed together, too fast for effective preventive action. Both ships are

  disabled. Casualties are severe. 9t

  "A gravitational vortex," Yoran said raggedly. "A potential well, an abnormal local metric, expanding principally in the main inertial plane. It didn't flatten to the ordinary curvature of space-time till it had passed

  you." Laurice thought he found refuge in theory. Did he utter mere guesses?

  Belike he did. Who was sure of anything, here?

  Her eyes tracked the dwindling star that was not a star. It gleamed

  exquisite, like a ringed planet seen from a distance, save that it was also like a galaxy with a single spiral arm. There passed through her: If Harul hadn't settled for less than we wanted, Darya too would be drifting helpless, a wreck. I might be dead. Oh, he might be!

  "We're sorry to hear that, madam," Vargen said. "Can we help?"

  "I do not know," Crystal answered, "but you are our single hope. We have

  contacted our nearer fellows. Ordinarily we could wait for diem. However,

  observation and calculation show we are on a collision trajectory with one of those gaseous objects spewed from the fusion. We shall enter it in approximately four hours and pass through the center. At its speed, that will go very fast. But radiornetric measurements show temperatures near the core that even in so brief a passage will be lethal. No Naxian craft is close enough, with sufficient boost capability, to arrive before them." Stillness descended. The time felt long until Vargen asked, slowly, "You have no escape? No auxiliaries, anything like that?"

  "Nothing in working order," said Crystal. "Else I would not have troubled you. We realize that for you, too, a rescue may well be impossible."

  "We can cross the distance between at maximum boost, ten Erthuma gravities, with turnover," Darya said, "in approximately one hundred and fifty minutes. To escape afterward, we should accelerate orthogonally to the thing's path, but at no more than five gravities, since you have injured persons with you and the hale will have no opportunity to prepare themselves either. This acceleration must begin no laterthan half an hour before predicted impact, if we are to avoid the hottest zone. Before we start, my crew must make ready; otherwise, at the end of the first boost they will be disabled, perhaps dead. Allowing time for that also, we should have half an hour, or slightly less, for the transfer of crews from your vessels to me. "

  In short, Laurice thought, the operation is crazily dicey. No. We can't.

  The odds are too big against us.

  Her gaze went to the clouds. She didn't know which of them was the murderer

  on its way, but they seemed much alike. Faerie nebulosity reached out around a glowing pink that must be gas overlying the white-hot, ultraviolet-hot, X-ray-hot middle. As she watched, small light streaks flashed from it and vanished. Meteors. No, they must in reality be monstrous gouts of fire.

  "I see," Crystal was saying gravely. "Our hope was slight at best. Since

  those are the actual parameters, the risk is unacceptable. I would make

  that judgment myself, were situations reversed. Thank you and farewell." ,'No, wait!" Vargen clawed at the locks on his. harness. "We're coming. Crew, prepare for ten gee acceleration."

  Is this possible? "Harul, you can't mean that," Laurice protested.

  His look upon her was metallic. "You heard me," he said. "All of you did. Get into the tank. That's an order."

  The chamber was completely filled and closed off; should a sudden change of vector occur, slosh could be fatal. The salt water was at body temperature; apart from their sanitary units, skinsuits served only modesty. Afloat, loosely tethered, breathing through air tube and masks, you might soon have drowsed, were your faring peaceful. Not that comfort was complete. The liquid took weight off bones and muscles, it helped keep body fluids where they belonged. Yet heaviness dragged at interior organs, while

  nothing but medication held pain and weariness at bay. Eventually you must pay what your vigor was costing you, with interest.

  A low, nearly subliminal pulse throbbed through Laurice. Darya could not hurl herself along at full power without a little of that immense energy escaping to sing in her structure. Hands and the minature control panel on which they rested were enlarged in vision, seemed closer than they were.

  Yet shipmates on every side had gone dim, half unreal, in a greenish twilight.

  Talk went by conduction from a diaphragm in the mask. After the scramble and profanity of getting positioned were done and boost had commenced, silence replaced a privacy that no longer existed.

  Laurice broke it first. "Captain," she said stiffly.

  Vargen never took his eyes off the single viewscreen, before which he was. "Yes?"

  "Captain, I petition you to reconsider. I believe the others will join me in this."

  "I do, sir!" She had not expected shy Newan to speak up. "The science we're losing, that we might do every minute if we weren't idled here."

  "The science we wiU lose, sir, if we don't survive," Thura. chimed in.

  "That all the human race will."

  "The chances of our survival are poor, you know," Laurice said.

  "A crazy gamble," Enry felt emboldened to add, "and for what? For some snakes that did their best to keep us away. f I

  "Mind your language," Vargen reprimanded in an automatic fashion. "Yoran, have you any comment?"

  "Well, Captain, uh, well," the physicist replied, "of course, when you commanded, we obeyed. We're no mutineers. But it's not too late for you to reconsider and turn back, sir. Your impulse was generous--fearless, yes-but thinking it over, wouldn't you agree we have a higher duty?"

  "Copperbue? ... No, I forgot, your simultrans wouldn't work here. " Laurice thought fleetingly how lonesome that must feel. Vargen turned his head.

  "But you have picked

  up a little Merse, I believe. Nod if you vote for us going on, wave your

  tail if you vote for us going back."

  After seconds had mounted, it was the tail that moved.

  Vargen barked a laugh. "Unanimous, eh? Except for me." He stared again at the viewscreen. From her post, Laurice saw it full of night; but he must be watching the flames. "However, I am the captain."

  She summoned her will. "Sir," she said, "I have the authority to set our

  destination. It is in safe space."

  "I have the authority to overrule you if I see a preemptive necessity.' , "Crew may lawfully protest unreasonable orders."

  "If the protest is denied, they must obey."

  "This will mean a board of inquiry after the voyage."

  "Yes. After the voyage."

  "If the captain shows ... dangerous incompetence, the crew may relieve him of his duties. The board of inquiry will decide whether or not they were justified. It is a desperate measure."

  "How do you propose to carry it out? This ship is programmed to me." Vargen raised his voice, though it remained as cold as before. "Darya, would you remove me from command of you?"

  "No," came the level answer. "What you attempt is exceedingly difficult and may fail, but success is possible, and it is not for me to make value judgments."

  "Values," Vargen murmured. "Everybody always told me what value sentient life has. The old, old saying, 'Greater love has no man than this, that he lay down his life for his friends.' Don't you agree any longer? Have your beliefs suddenly changed? We are seven. There must be ten or twenty times that many aboard those ships. Civilized spacefarers go to the aid of the distressed. We shall. "

  Sharply: "My judgment is that we can do it, provided we keep our heads and work together. Otherwise we doubtless are doomed. I assume you are all able, self-controlled people when you choose to be. Very well, we'll now develop a basic plan of action. As we approach, I'll contact Crystal again, learn in detail what the situation is as of that time, and assign tasks. "

  "No, please, sir," Yoran stammered.

  Laurice unclenched her jaws. "You heard the captain," she said. "Let's get cracking."

  The sky burned.

  A fireball glared lightning colored. It would have been blinding to behold, were it not shrouded in a vast nimbus that glowed blue, yellow, red with its own heat. Smoke streaked the vapors, ragged, hasty, as the thing whirled. Currents twisted themselves into maelstroms. The limb of the flattened disk faded toward darkness. Tongues of flame leaped from it, arced over, streamed sparks behind their deluge. At the equator, many broke off and sprang free, cometary incandescences. Those that were aimed forward ran ahead of the mass that birthed them. Right, left, above, below, they passed blazing around the ships. They would not gutter out for thousands of kilometers more.

  If any of those thunderbolts hits us, we're done, Laurice knew.

  Spacesuited, she clung to a handhold near the portside forward airlock and waited. A viewscreen showed a pale ghost of what lay ahead. Darya maneuvered now at fractions of a gravity, but shifts in direction brought momentary dizziness, as if chaos reached in to grab at her. The Naxian craft were outlined black across the oncoming lightstorm. Their impact had driven plates and ribs together, formed a single grotesque mass, two boughs reaching from a stump. It wobbled and tumbled. Shards danced around.

  A fire tongue streaked, swelled, was gone. It had missed Darya by a few hundred meters. At Laurice's side, Vargen caught a breath, half a cry. In her audio receiver it sounded almost like the scream of a bullet. Through their helmets she saw sweat runnel down the creases in his face. "You shouldn't be here," she told him. "You belong in the command globe."

  He shook his head. "The ship c-can cope. We need ... every hand. "

  At least, she thought, he has enough sense left to refrain from boasting he won't send crew into any danger he won't meet himself. The hazards are much the same wherever we may be, with that ogre booming down on us. But if he stayed behind, he wouldn't be out among the meteors. And he'd have an overall view; he might make the snap decision a robot brain wouldn't, that saves us.

  No use. I've tried. He's determined. And, true, we're ghastly undermanned as is.

  Laurice swallowed fear, anger, bitterness, and braced herself. They were about to make contact.

  Weight ended. She floated fire. Silence pressed inward, save for noises of breath and her slugging heart. Voices went back and forth, she knew,

  Darya's and Crystal's or Helix's or whoever was in charge over there; but she wasn't in that circuit. The screen showed her the silhouette of an extruded gang tube, groping for an airlock. Wormlike, obscene, amidst the terrible beauty of the flames. To hang here passive was to lie in nightmare. How long? Seconds, minutes, years? It had better be less than half an hour. That was about as much time as they had before death became inescapable. Could she choke down her shriek that long?

  How had anybody stayed sane at Novaya?

  Contact. Linkage. Weight returned, low but crazily, sickeningly shifty as Darya matched the gyrations of the other hulls. The airlock valve moved aside. The mouth beyond gaped. Laurice pushed into the chamber before she should lose her last nerve. Vargen followed. They collided, whirled about in clownish embrace, caromed off the side. The valve shut. For a moment they were adrift in blindness, and she wanted to hold him close.

  The inner valve opened. Air brawled down the gang tube. The compartment beyond lay bared to vacuum. Launce let the wind help her along. Frost formed briefly on dust, little streamers that glittered in the beams from wrist lights.

  She and Vargen came forth into a cavern. Air fled and light fell undiffused, hard-edged. Things sprang solitary out of shadow that otherwise engulfed sight---save where the hull was rent and stan marched manifold past.

  The rotations of the conjoined wrecks caught at your blood and balance, cast you about. Space was too confmed for safe use of a jetpack. You must somehow recover, compensate, be a master juggler; and the ball you kept going was yourself.

  Yourself and others. Naxians in their long, many-jointed spacesuits waited for deliverance. Most tumbled helpless. A number were violently nauseated, their helmets smeared with spew on which they choked. A handful (pseudopodful, Laurice thought with a lunatic chuckle) of trained personnel were there to shepherd them as well as might be. The task was too much for so few. Victims, especially the injured, kept flopping and drifting away. The humans went after them.

  Things couldn't be so bad at the waist lock. It was joined to an unruptured section. Clumsy though they might be, Yoran and his scientists could give the Naxian marshals some help. And elsewhere, Darya's three robots flitted to a part torn entirely loose. They would break in and tow back those whom they found.

  But this half of Green Pyramid had been barred from the rest. Damaged servos didn't allow personnel trapped in it to transfer to the middle and await rescue. Instead, crewfolk from Altitude must bring extra spacesuits and, as rendezvous neared, herd, drag, manhandle the people into this ripped compartment, the only one that Darya's forward gang tube could reach when the middle one was engaged.

  Laurice's light picked out a threshing, drifting shape. She went for it. Spin changed its path. She kicked against a crumpled plate, intercepted, clutched. Panicky, the Naxian struggled in her arms. "Hold still, you idiot," she groaned.

  Noises she could neither understand nor imitate gibbered in her ears. Some that were calm and steady came to dampen them. The Naxian didn't relax, but stiffened, became a load Laurice could manage. She heard the Merse:

  "Honored one, I am informed that several victims are near the breach in the hull." Back aboard Darya, simultrans active, Copperhue was the living message switchboard.

  Laurice bore her burden to the tube mouth and gave it

  an impetus. The passage was already half filled with bodies. A Naxian officer at either end clung by the tail to a handhold and issued orders. Several at a time, the fugitives were passing into the lock and thus to the Atheran ship. Laurice kicked off toward the gap where the stars danced.

  Hoo! Nearly went through it! She clutched a piece of metal in time and cast light rays about. The serpentine forms appeared in the glow, suits ashimmer. They had wrapped themselves fast to whatever they found, lest they be cast adrift into space.

  6 'Copperhue," Laurice called,- "tell them to link hands or tails or whatever and let go when I take the lead. I'll guide them to the tube,--" Heaven vanished in a burst of brilliance. For a moment there was no more night. Throughout the cavern, each being, body, bit of wreckage sprang forth into sight. They had no color; that radiance showed them molten white. Thunder crashed in Laurice's skull. The doomsday blow sent her off, end over end, barely aware - She heard a

  howl and knew it was Vargen. Dazzlement blew in rags. As if she dreamt,

  there passed across her: very near miss. Electric field. Discharge. How close by now are we to the volcano?

  Then a solidity captured her, and brought her to rest, and she heard, "Laurice, are you all right, oh, Laurice."

  Slowly, she looked about her. The fire splash afterimages began to fade;

  she glimpsed stars. The ringing in her ears diminished. I'm alive, she

  knew.

  "Get into the tube," Vargen chattered. "Back aboard Darya. I'll finish here."

  "No," she said hoarsely. "You go on. Back to your work. We've damn little time left. I'll join you in a couple of minutes."

  A sob caught in his throat. He released her and sped off.

  Stars, Milky Way, sister galaxies shone in majesty. Among them the black hole and its disk were a jewel, minute and dwindling. Even the cloud from which Darya fled was now scarcely more than another gleam in the brightness-crowded dark. The crimson that for minut6s